Grocery Shopping

I promised pictures and here they are. These are pictures from our shopping trip to Walmart on Monday. This is an average week for us. We had 61 kids in the condos for the week and 35 campers for a 3 night/3day trip.

Here is 4 of our 8 shopping carts


Here is Blair with the recipt for $1500.


Here is Hannah at the half-way point of loading the truck.


And finally - the truck fully loaded - the picture does not do it justice. Just think to yourself that this is a full size Toyota Tundra with a camper shell that is taller than me and it is full to the gill.


So now you know. Those of you who I call on my "Walmart trips" now you can visualize what I am doing.

Best Birthday Ever!!!

Ok- so tomorrow is my birthday - I will be 29. Can you believe it?? I seriously don't feel my age. Maybe that has to do with our summer staff who is all 18 - 22. Anyways for my birthday my wonderful sister Autumn decided to surprise me and FLY out to Durango to come see me for like 48 hours this weekend. She got here late late Saturday night and left Monday around three. We had such a fun time. We went to a few new restaurants, went to Trimble hot springs with the family, and went white water rafting. It amazing how much we squeezed in. All that to say my sister ROCKS, and I had an amazing birthday present.

Monday was sad though because I had to say goodbye to Autumn and Marilyn. Marilyn had been here 10 days hanging out, cooking for the staff, and taking care of the boys. I will miss her lots and so will Nash and Beck.

Sorry no pictures for this post - we were too busy to take any.

Thomas the Train

Sorry it has been so long - this has been a crazy fun weekend which I will get into in the coming week. To start off our weekend we (Lance, myself, and Marilyn) took Nash to see and ride on Thomas the Train. I swore I would not let our sons love Thomas, but there was no avoidance. He absolutley loves it. He can name all the engines and asks to watch it everyday. So all that to say - he really loved it. Here is a picture of Thomas pulling the Durango/Silverton train.



Here is the family riding Thomas


Lastly - here is Nash riding Thomas and loving every second.


So needless to say Nash had a blast and Mimi bought him anything he wanted. He is still sleeping every night with the Thomas blanket.

Mesa Verde

Today Marilyn and I spent the day exploring the Indian ruins at Mesa Verde (meaning green table). We had a great time, but were not expecting it to be quite so cold. It was 51 when we got there at 10:30. We were ill prepared for that temperature. It was still loads of fun. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

The View

Today our first group got here. With this comes the first big shopping trip of the summer. Lets just say that we had to shop for 58 campers for 4 to 5 days. More about this when I can get a good picture that showns the magnitude of what that entails.

For now lets just focus on the view. Here is the view from the bedroom, dining room, and kitchen..

For us it really is all about the ministry to the staff and then kids, but this view definitely helps things along. I mean really - this is the view we wake up to every day and go to sleep to every night. It can really spoil someone.

Staff Training Day 1

So we are here in beautiful Durango and today is the first day of staff training. We hiked the Cascade trail this morning, and went to practice setting up rappells this afternoon. This is the staff (minus Lance who is playing photographer). The mountain in the background is called Engineer and when a little bit of the massive snow melts we will be on our way up.

We are having a little bit of a rough time with Beck who has not adjusted to something. We are not sure if it is the mountain air, the new place, or sleeping in the same room as Nash, but he started waking up at 2:00 am and did not sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time until morning. It was the worst night of sleep we have had since the night he came home from the hospital.

We are hoping that the sleeping gets better, but thankfully he did not wake up any of the staff and they are totally sweet to play with and hold both the boys whenever needed. Tomorrow looks like it will be very similar to today. Hike in the morning - rappell in the afternoon.

Getting Ready

So tomorrow lance leaves for Durango and I follow on Thursday. While the thought of getting there, doing camp, and hanging out with the staff is awesome, the packing leaves something to be desired. With two boys I feel as though I am packing the whole house. In the beginning of Compass we could take all four staff (yes - we only had four), all the Compass gear, and all our personal belongings and fit it into the Tacoma. We would just drive up in one day and start training the next. Now you would think that we were on a Secret Service mission. We have to arrange the meeting of all 13 staff riding in different cars, caravanning, and flying into different airports. We also now take the huge Tundra which pulls the U-Haul trailer. I think the U-Haul is just for the boys stuff alone. All that to say I will just be happy when we get there. My plan is to blog our summer at least twice a week so that you guys can actually see what I am actually talking about. But please don't hold me to it - we sometimes lose track of weeks up there.